Yes, the first NFS game, Madden was ok, first FIFA game was very good, some in-house games were also pretty damn good. I hated the 1x cd-rom drive, was slow as hell, but I still crank up the old 3do every now and then.
3DO?
they had games worth playing again?
Sucks for you that you miss out on tons of awesome games.
I just do emulators or PSN/Wii Virtual Console.
System Shock 2 for PC gaming. Probably best PC game ever IMO. I don't know of any other PC game that I've replayed dozens of times or revisited every so many years. Most I just play once, rush to the finish, and forget about.
I find it's opposite with me. I was spoiled by the golden age of gaming during the 16 bit era, and now I'm tired of being franchised and nickel and dimed to death by EA and Activision for shitty games based on the 150th iteration of a reboxed Call of Duty, Madden, and Rock Band with 3 more textures.
Have to go back to when games were games that took 2+ years to make and not "how can we make something with no effort every month that can take ADHD people on another $59.99 ride for an hour or less?"
The consoles may be 100000x more powerful now, but the games were 1000x better from the NES through PS1 era. Now days there is no innovation, just rehashes, sequels, and downloadable content, and it's all available exactly the same across every platform. I mean COME ON, today's state of the art in gaming is that we are now SELLING CLOTHES AND ACCESSORIES FOR ONLINE AVATARS FFS! Console market has started looking more like the cell phone market; cheap shitty short simple "punch the monkey" games and ring tones that you pay monthly fees for. And today's ADHD "can't watch a movie or complete a game if it takes more than 45 mins or is more complex than Punch the Monkey" crowd is all over it.
I have about two dozen XBox 360 games that are unique that I really enjoy, but they they don't hold a candle to the 16 bit "must haves" and aren't going to leave me any unforgettable memories like my SNES and Genesis did.
I have about 20 games for SNES that I've never played before that have had homebrew English patches in the last couple years. Tales of Phantasia, Seiken Densetsu 3, etc. Some of the last games of the SNES era that were just starting to really do things nobody thought a SNES could do (Tales has a full vocal track intro and I swear you forget it's a SNES and not a PS1 or Saturn 2D game). And of course I'm going to replay binge all the classics in their newfound RGB glory, as well as the fact that my save files will be going forever to SD and not BBSRAM with dead batteries.
RGB monitor cannot get here soon enough. I'm mostly nervous I'll get the monitor in a couple days, and then be stuck staring at it waiting for SCART cables and RGB+sync breakout box... I hope UK mail is fast getting through customs.
Too bad you feel that way. I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for the 8bit and 16bit games I grew up with, but today's games are absolutely phenomenal. Could you imagine what it would have been like getting a sneak peek at today's games in the 8bit era?
The great retro games have a simplicity and timelessness that will always make them great to play. I hesitate to even call them retro because a great game is a great game, period. But going back over my old library of carts and emulators, I find that the fondness I had for a game can be quickly overwritten when so, so many of them just haven't stood the test of time, whether its janky mechanics, frustrating difficulty, and graphics that often just don't hold up.
Even though I have a CRT with my old consoles hooked up, I still find myself excited over remakes - retro games had a style forced upon them by their hardware. Its the actual game I really loved, and there aint nothing wrong with bringing a great game to the 21st century. I'm a little bummed that nintendo chose the weaksauce 3DS as the platform to revive OoT, but just imagine the full force of the upcoming WiiU applied to a hand drawn remake of LttP.
Then cry, because it'll probably never happen.
There were just as many crappy, piss poor 8/16 bit games then as there are PS3/360/pc games now. Same with the good ones, however when your a kid, you have more tolerance but i don't believe the old games are really better than today's, their just different and technically the old ones only averaged 45 minutes to beat, thats why they had to make them hard.
Some were too hard.
But theres plenty of challenging games today, even quite a few 2d games out there if you actually look. the difference with the mainstream games is too many of you must be using the easy setting instead of hardest setting which the old games defaulted to.
Now someone here will tell me how they play "**" game or something on Uber extreme hard core from the get go and its still too easy cause they are just that much of a billy fucking badass. in pre response i say stfu.
i don't see how the newer Ninja gaiden's..etc are any easier than the old ones cause i beat the old ones, but regardless your different as a kid in this regard and no one is forcing you to use your save points, you could just restart the whole game each time...but you don't do you? instead you complain about save points being for ADHD kids? yet you don't replay all those levels each time you play?...hmm, that makes real fuking sense doesnt it. oh but someone here will have an excuse for that as well.
This is a lot of what I mean about janky mechanics - Im not an arcade, why am I being limited by the number of "lives" I have? Why do I have to constantly repeat levels or start back at the beginning? Why is the game SO hard that it's as if the developers didn't actually intend on you finishing it?
Take a look at a game like super meat boy - basic mechanics, and super difficult. But you have no limit on the number of times you can retry and the levels are short. Despite being more demanding than many retro games, it's not frustrating at all because those artificial barriers than pad length are entirely removed.
Then compare it to a game like castlevania 1 - god forbid you make a mistake or you haven't memorized the level and you get thrown so far back. It was aggravating back then, and even more so now when I've become accustomed to not having to deal with that bullshit.
I've found that it wasn't until the modern age of emulators with savestates that I've been able to complete and enjoy the entirety of many of my favorite games from my childhood. This of course doesn't apply to JRPGs, but it's one of the ways many classic games dont quite hold up and remain better memories than games. My time is too precious nowadays as an adult.
For one, game design was not really a science back then, When Nintendo revitalized gaming, companies formed up that had very limited experienced individuals and programmers, some of whom probably never played games. Of course programming debugging in the 80's was likely not really the same as it is today.
They had budget limits, time limits far worse than today, so it was easier to just take a great idea and narrow it down into limitations to the player.
Save states back then cost money, required a physical memory and battery to save the info...limited info mind you. Later they came up with save codes but i'm sure that cost development time and money.
Emu's solve that problem.
Super meat boy is a more modern game, made with modern programming and development kits, by modern developers who probably have gaming experience and better understanding of game design than some japaneese college kids did back in the 80's having to hard code everything i imagine.
Todays games LOOK phenomenal, but they are empty and shallow. Madden 254637 ultra Super HD Turbo Special Edition and Call of Duty 57 have nothing on Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy III, Super Metroid, etc on the story and memories department.
Todays games might be 1080p but they are written for todays ADHD players who are content as long as they can blow something up 10 seconds into a new game and have new eye candy show off their HDTV.
I have a 360 on HDMI to a 1080p AE4000 projector on a 10' screen, so I know how awesome it looks. Other than graphics and physics technical demos, todays games just aren't exiting me and don't have that magic of the 16 bit era. I blame EA and Activision for most of that for turning the industry into a greedy rush it out with bugs and get their money and dump it franchising model.
And as far as SNES goes there is NO emulator whatsoever to this day that can emulate the SNES SPC700 sound chip properly or do it any justice.
I just got a psone and nintendo64, I'm looking to pick up a snes and nes. Any suggestions as far as video setup goes? I know the nes and snes will look best on an older CRT, but what about the psone and nintendo 64? Will those two look ok on an LCD HDTV?
Pics of setups If you have them!
Any hard core retro gamers here? I mean serious RGB elitists?
Im eagerly awaiting delivery of a Sony PVM-20M4U that I found from original owner with 100 hours on it along with a SNES SCART RGB cable and BNC adapter.
Can't wait to put arcade monitors to shame !
I have a MAME cabinet that I scratch built.
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=105534.0
Can do any system really. N64, Nintendo, Sega genesis, etc.
Pretty cool, but standing the entire time would get old.